LeAnn Rimes Has Learned to Ignore the Tabloids

LeAnn Rimes has lived a life perfect for a movie screen. She won her first singing competition at the age of five, and when she was 11, she signed her first record deal. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Rimes discusses growing up in the spotlight, her new music and how she gets past all the tabloid rumors.

Another personal and autobiographical album is on the way from Rimes following her 2013 release of Spitfire. But she says this time around, the album comes from a completely different point of view and place in her life.

"This album has a lot to do with love for myself, and appreciation for myself," she tells the Chicago Tribune. "It's taken a lot for me to get there. I talk a lot about family on the album. I've never heard a song written from a stepmother's point of view, about their family. That's somewhere I went on this record."

While Rimes says she knows a song from a stepmother's perspective will rile up some listeners, she says it's a song she needed to write.

"I think I'm realizing I've always been able to move people, just getting people to talk," she says. "I'm talking about a subject that doesn't get written about. I know society these days, I know people are wanting to find everything they can to pick things apart, but I have to write from my heart and my experiences, and I fully own them. Those are mine to share."

Rimes has had her fair share of experience a subject in the tabloids, but as she explains, she's found a way to make peace with everything. While she admits it still gets to her, it's not something she dwells on.

"I know myself, and when you start to really know who you are, you don't question it when you read what someone says about you. We live in an epidemic of self-hatred. I see it daily with people coming at me, and they do it to everybody, it's not just me," Rimes notes. "The hatred is really stemming from them not liking themselves. When you look at it that way, I feel so much empathy and understanding for those people. It takes a burden off my back. I don't take it personally."